There are conflicts wrt persistence when used in JBoss AS 7, so starting the task server INSIDE the appserver is currently problematic at best. These are being looked in to, but in the mean time, you can start a human task server external to the appserver using the script provided in the jbpm 5.2.0.Final download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/jbpm/files/jBPM%205/jbpm-5.2.0.Final/ .